A fine will not be fine at all
Star is dead. Mona Farrugia is angry. And so are you. So what are we going to do about it?
The divorce referendum and resounding YES vote has brought one thing to the fore: there is a groundswell of radical and liberal thinking which is going on. If those in authority continue to disregard it, it will prove their undoing. In Malta, 53% is not a majority, it is not a landslide: it is global warming.
A lot of small occurences – like snowflakes in an avalanche – are coming together and all of them are leading to people on the ground thinking ‘Do I have to take this shit?’.
These people, previously unrepresented by anybody except small groups or factions which struggle to keep it together on an organizational level, now have one place where they all get together: facebook.
I was one of the first people on facebook way back when and remember, through the years, top-level execs (the ones with their hands on the company budget) saying that this was a ‘fad’ and it would blow over. They also said that in general about the internet. Some of them are still saying it.
This morning, Star: The Dog Who Lived group on facebook has almost 55,000 fans. Fifty five thousand fans. Obviously, that’s from all over the world, and sadly, yet again we are in the news for all the wrong reasons, but it is still 55,000 people who hit ‘like’. Sadly, many of the comments are inane, superficial and sometimes simply potty.
Most of these people are baying for the blood of the person who gagged and bound this dog, shot her in the head and buried her (as it eventually turned out) alive. I sometimes wonder whether this person knows what is going on. I wonder if he knows that the moment he is ‘found’ a lot of people want to see him dead after participating in his execution, preferably after slow torture in a public square.
We must now channel what is turning out a mass keyboard hysteria into something positive: a change in the law. That is not going to happen on facebook. It needs to go beyond, especially because facebook is way too fragmented: people just write things and within a few minutes you cannot even find the words, let alone who wrote it.
The Yes legislation will go through because we now have a voice: the bloggers, the internet, facebook and twitter will see to it. We do not need the print media, radio and television – locally all run by the same bunch of people – to make this happen. We are already making it happen.
We need to harness this feeling together into pressing for a change in legislation of animal protection. This does not mean that we should go to the ridiculous levels of PETA, best exemplified by South Park’s depiction of goat-loving, beard-wearing men, but we most definitely need to show what is going on. We already are.
Those in power – the politicians we voted into parliament and who seem to have less balls (as we saw in the past couple of months) than an empty bowling alley – need to recognize that we are angry. Angry.
We are angry at how they fail to protect us, the little people. We are angry at how they protect their own pockets, their own little bunch of people (in 98% of cases, more men) in top positions. Matthew Vella depicted it beautifully in his Mullah article on Malta Today online.
We are angry at how, on a governmental level, this issue with Star and her eventual death has failed, on a public level, to register anything in their heads.
Is it just me or are you all angry too? Furious, even?
Because it is bloody useless hitting ‘like’ on that facebook page and then not following it with your actions, which will, at some point include voting.
Legislation is carried out in parliament. Somebody – an MP – has to propose a change in the law which currently makes a mockery of people’s feelings. Even if Star’s murderer is found (again, another question, do you think this will actually happen?) he has more chance of getting retribution from the people than our courts, which simply follow the law. Law is created in parliament. And the law says that he would be fined.
Fined – no matter how much, and it is still very little – will not cut it. Malta is full of people who will do what this man did to Star, over and over, to him. This man is running out there with a saw off shotgun in his hands and a sick little mind in his cranium.
There are a lot more of us than there are of him though. So what are we going to do about it?
Comments
Dear Mona,
You may wish to take a look at The Animal Welfare Act (Chapter 439 of the Laws of Malta) which was enacted in 2002. This makes quite comprehensive cover for the prevention of ill-treatment to animals - if you look at Section 45 you will see that anybody who is found guilty of an offence in terms of this Act, would be liable to a fine of up to EUR 46,587, and imprisonment for up to one year.
So in the case of Star, the person is liable not just to a fine, but even to imprisonment for up to one year. Whether that discretion would be used if the person is actually traced, is another question altogether. One has to keep in mind that if it turns out that this person had no previous convictions in particular, other options, like a suspended sentence or even a probation, would be possible.
Of course, baying for blood in this case is not going to get anyone anywhere. The problem is one of investigation, more than enforcement of the law. As you can see, the law is there (even though people may, in the current mood, feel that it is not harsh enough). But finding the culprit is the real problem. And in this connection, the Maltese omerta` - rajt ma rajtx u smajt ma smajtx - of course does not help. Having said that, I doubt that the devious person who committed this crime did so in front of witnesses - that is often the nature of crime...
Strongly agree with you both - especially the irony Adrian pointed out in drowning Kittens just coz we 'don't have anywhere to keep them but if we take them to the Dog's Home they'll kill them anyway' - instead of neutering them in the first place.
Unfortunately people will not learn unless HARSH fines are in place - we have seen this all over our history - till today we see bastards peeling plastic and foil out of their cigarette packets and throwing them on the ground - even though we have fines of (if I'm not mistaken) at least €100. We started controlling speeds only where we have speed cameras. Bottom line: You break the rules, your pocket gets affected. THAT's the only law we Maltese seem to understand, NOT it should not be done coz it's bad. Let's face it, with Maltese prisons comparing to 5-star Hotels (for the BIG criminals anyway) having the guy who mistreated Star locked up for a week or at most a month (IF he is even caught in the first place) is sheer luxury. And NO, in spite of how many people want the guy tied to a post and lashed to death, is NOT something that will ever be done, not even in a Muslim country where rape warrants no less than your penis chopped off in front of an audience. If I'd catch him I'd make him pay a whopping big fine to discourage him from ever doing that again AND possibly even send him to therapy - no person is ever born so bad - the guy must have seen some real f*%@&^-up shit to become so perversely cruel.
@Adrian
Your comments about children are excellent. 100% agreed.
So we are basically agreeing that enforcement is crap, in general.
I do not know about 'not having resources'. They are there. Are they being used? I doubt it. Otherwise why would the police (112 and stations) be ignoring our calls?
That to me is terribly serious. Some days ago there was a report of a woman who was calling about a neighbour being beaten up and she was ignored and fobbed off.
How many times has this happened to us? I've lost count of the police saying stuff like 'if you want to make a report you have to come here'. What?! Somebody is dying and I need to get into a car and drive to the station just so somebody won't get off their fat arse?
Which leads me to think that somebody did see this guy. Somebody may have called. We will never know. Maybe he was ignored.
Or maybe he just thought 'What's the point in calling...nobody will take action anyway?'...
Mona, If enforcement is improved then i'm all for making the punishments much much harsher, but they must go together. But as things stand it will not make any improvement. Police in general (not the Animal Welfare of course) don't have the resources and much less willpower to investigate animal cruelty cases. Politicians do not give a crap about animals until it suits them to appear in a photo shoot, so I have less than zero confidence in them either. Their conscience never calls to them in such cases.
Kids....maybe we are exposed to a lot of 'educated' youngsters...see what kids in other areas get up to, out of sheer ignorance, boredom and savage parents who think nothing of drowning newly born kittens because they're useles.. They get desensitized pretty quickly I would say. They think it's normal. They stroke a street cat and their mother screams at them to get off because they're 'mahmugin jintnu jaqq' (this applies to all sectors of society). Awareness that animals do feel pain, that's what's needed. Kids need to be shown that animals suffer, that they hurt, that throwing them out in a street when they have lived all their lives in a domestic environment is going to cause them immense suffering and a probably death.
Adrian
I don't agree with you.
The law needs to be changed.
Then:
We need enforcement. This country has no enforcement in general. Just because the enforcement is crap does that mean that laws should not exist or be amended? That is seriously convoluted thinking.
Today Saviour Balzan has written that he does not trust the police. This is a very serious situation.
So you see, this is not about Star at all. It is about much, much more than that.
As to children and education: do you seriously know a 5 year old who does not like animals? Education is good and necessary but something happens along the way to these children which changes them. That is what we need to explore.
Changing the laws is mostly useless, because
1. No one is ever caught anyway, and
2. People with that mentality will do it anyway, irrespective of the punishments the law can impose.
What is needed is to change the mentality, of kids to start with. A mentality to treat animals well, and a mentality to report what they see. The older brain-dead morons are past the ability to change their attitude.Those simply need to die.
